3. You need to accelerate your strike. It has been my experience that lots of people strike incorrectly. If done properly, a good strike can stop a person in their tracks.

A word of caution: If you decide to practice your punches this way, when you are practicing with a partner, be careful. If you do this type of punch correctly the energy will feed into your opponent.

What that means is you won’t realize how powerful you are striking , however your practice partner will. More often the first time someone punches correctly they end up not realizing how hard their punch was as it seemed so effortless.

So take your time and try not to damage your training buddy. Remember if you beat up your training partners, you may end up not having anyone to train with. 😉

Watch how to create powerful punches below:

Let us know what you think of this lesson in the comments below. If you need any help, let us know there as well!

About Sifu Larry Rivera

Sifu Larry has been training in martial arts since he was 5. In his early years his father influenced his martial arts training. He taught him the basics of self defense, guile, military tactics, Judo and Jiu Jitsu. At age 7 his he was enrolled in Goju-Ryu which he trained in until he was 16. He took sometime off, but when he came back he decided he was never quitting martial arts again and at the age of 19 his thoughts on what martial arts was and was not got flipped when he started training with Sifu Phu and learning internal martial arts. Needless to say, he's a lifer and a guy you want on your side.

Comments

Please can you clarify why punching/connecting with the top two knuckles is your preferred method, because I think other practitioners have the notion of punching/connecting with the bottom two knuckles etc?

Hey Bobby S, sure I can explain it for you. First off, the top 2 knuckles have way more support on the wrist than the bottom three so it has a better connection with the body when hitting. Second thing is is the bottom 2 don’t have a lot of support and will often give upon impact as well as take a lot of pressure that can hurt you (hit a heavy bag with the bottom three, then the top two and you will see the difference). The other thing is if you hit around the body, you will see that the bottom two knuckles have a hard time aligning to the body to get a good strike without having to sink to get it (which takes too long to do and recover for repeated strikes). When hitting a higher than your shoulders, like to the face when someone is taller than you, you will find that pressure will have a tendency to go to your shoulders. That’s because your shoulders are the lowest point and your trying to hit slightly upwards to drive the bottom 3 in. If you focus on your top 2, then you will create a counter force that keeps your arm more steady cause the wrist turning upwards counter balances the drop from the shoulders where if you focus on the bottom three knuckles, your creating a downward motion with a downward drive from you shoulders. That’s why you will feel the stress on your shoulders more but not from the top two. Do this test, get a friend (who is equal to your height or taller) and have your fist on his face (if he doesn’t mind) have him push your fist backwards with his face and you focus your bottom three. See how it feels and what kind of pressure you can make. Then have him do the same thing, only this time focus on your top two driving straight in. See the difference. You and your friend will tell. Let me know how that works out for you.